twilight

The sky is fading, the blue leeched out of it like an ancient pair of stone washed jeans. The light that's left clings to the roof tops. I sit at my desk looking out at the street through the narrow terrace windows with their horizontal bars. The ink of night seems to be seeping up from the earth, erasing all detail from the gum trees and houses...oh geez, that's enough...it's dark already.

Feeling much better. My cold is almost gone. Unfortunately I passed it on to my partner who came down with it quite severely and then just as she was recovering, an opportunistic stomache virus seemed to slip in and caught her unawares. She has been really sick the last few days but is back to work today.

Meanwhile I have had bursts of energy that I've spent on preparing and painting two walls, one in the study and one in the bedroom, prior to the installation of our built in wardrobes that are being installed tomorrow!!

I'm very excited about this. Yes, storage does make me happy. The days of living with piles of boxes in the corner of each room will be over. I do like things to be put away but I'm not really fussed about cleanliness. A bit of dirt here and there, that's OK, it doesn't bother me but I really don't like clutter and mess. Where I got this preference for things being in their place is not very hard to imagine. I have tempered my mum's love of all things neat, clean and tidy to just focus on the neat and tidy bit and have rebelled against the clean.

Yesterday I handed in my application for a Postgraduate Scholarship in Sweden to take place later this year. I was in two minds about whether to apply and decided that I would focus on the application as a process in itself and I'm glad I did this because it has clarified my ideas about my PHD thesis and made me reflect on how the stuff I'm learning and researching can be applied to other outcomes such as seminar and conference papers. However, I remain concerned I may not be able to afford eight weeks in Sweden and then another month in the UK when I could be in Australia conducting field work. Three years is such a short time to do a thesis. It only really makes sense if I can justify the trip based on its direct relevance to my PHD, in terms of material collected and research conducted. Well, I did it anyway, and who knows whether I will be successful or not. My philosophy is to make the most of every opportunity and experience because it is only three years and though it may very well result in a better thesis to spend the entire time with my head down reading and focusing on my research, I want to experience more than that during my PHD.

Talking about reading, at the moment I'm reading Kenneth Gergen's "The Saturated Self" and "Emotions in Social Life", an anthology of writings on the emerging field of sociology of emotions. I'm also dipping into "The Social Shaping of Technology" to reacquaint myself with some of the social constructivist approaches to technology. I need to finalise my confirmation of candidature document and have sort of drifted away from the headspace I was in when I wrote it. My supervisor is arranging the committee presentation date for the first week of August. Small wave of panic...